SOME OF YOU reading this may be too young to remember the era when shopping for groceries in Ireland meant handing a list to a shopkeeper over the counter.
A new short documentary from two Irish filmmakers aims to chart the seismic move from old-style corner shops in Ireland to the-then glamorous notion of self-serve supermarkets.
For those of you reading who do remember the move, the filmmakers – director Laura McGann and producer Aisling Ahmed – would love to hear from you for possible contributions to their film. (You can email counter@crowhillfilms.com – click here for more information).
McGann’s grandfather Mattie Melia introduced the Mace supermarket brand to Ireland in the 1964. Incidentally, Melia was an enthusiastic amateur filmmaker who recorded not only family events but the change of pace in his own grocery shop business. Some of this invaluable super 8 footage forms the basis of the new doc, The End of the Counter.
As McGann sets out on a website created for the film, her grandfather noted the changes taking place in the family-run shops business in England in the 1960s where many were going out of business in the face of new big supermarkets setting up in their area. Realising that similar change would soon overtake Irish shop owners, he took a proactive stance encouraging local shops to join together under the brand name ‘Mace’ and buy in bulk for cheaper. She explains:
He knew that sooner or later this would happen in Ireland. And he knew that hundreds of families around the country would lose their livelihoods to the corporations. So he did something about it. He made them up their game, their business game. The old model wasn’t going to work anymore.The first thing that had to go was the counter, it meant the shopkeeper could make sales quicker and therefore reduce his price and ultimately compete with the bigger chains that were on their way.
The trailer below of some of the fantastic footage the late Mattie Melia preserved through his cine-camera shows a time of great social change in Ireland, particularly in rural areas. She says:
After a grand opening by the likes of a very youthful Terry Wogan, customers in rural Ireland could for the first time walk into a shop and browse, pick things up, look at them, put them down again and compare products. Heinz or Bachelors? It was glamorous and exciting and along with it came the introduction of queuing; an American phenomenon also only seen before in the movies.
Incidentally, and sadly, McGann says that the shop which Wogan is seen opening in the trailer closed forever on Tuesday of last week. The doc will therefore be recording both the opening and closure of the local business, an indication of the ever-challenging marketplace for small business owners.
via Faidra Films/Vimeo
According to McGann, her grandfather transformed at least 11 local shops in Kildare, Westmeath, Offaly, Wiclow and Laois – he was a native of Kildare – and she hopes to chart how such changes affected the lives of the community.
The End of the Counter is funded by the Irish Film Board as part of Reality Bites, with additional support from Kildare County Council and will be released in November this year. Check it out at TheEndoftheCounter.com and on its Facebook page. The website also has links to Melia’s footage from individual shops in the 1960s.
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